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LEFT WATCH
Antony Loewenstein on the launch of a new type of Coke:
It’s legal and possibly quite effective, though ethnically suspect.
Talented blundersmith Loewenstein once visited Melbourne to consume brassieres (since amended). The man’s a living Two Ronnies sketch. Meanwhile, Andrew West declines to correct his angry teen ravings about George W. Bush:
I made no reference to the number of mine deaths. I merely pointed to the Bush administration’s cuts to the agency that monitors mine safety. I have nothing to retract.
Class act, isn’t he?
(Via James Waterton, now writing at Samizdata)
UPDATE. West is now calling for Tony Blair to be jailed for life:
I want war-mongering, human rights-abusing government leaders to face trial and life imprisonment.
“I made no reference before I made the reference”
Posted by Mr. Bingley on 2006 01 11 at 09:01 AM • permalinkI must admit I have become horribly addicted to Coke Zero. I’ve even drunk it first thing in the morning. The shame…..
Posted by Monroe Doctrine on 2006 01 11 at 09:50 AM • permalinkWow, Tim! Revel in the fact that you are read by Loewenstein himself! He’s already edited the offending culturally-related word.
Posted by James Waterton on 2006 01 11 at 09:59 AM • permalinkI see Ant has a new photo of himself on his website. Is he trying to look less like a girlie man?
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 01 11 at 10:35 AM • permalinkHow funny. I want traitorous, leftist-propaganda-spewing, enemy-heartening jerks tried and imprisoned.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 01 11 at 10:35 AM • permalinkAs James posted in Antony’s comment thread:
If anything, I get the feeling it’s a little lame - especially when I read the faux comments on their blog about how great the zero movement is.
Same here. Maybe lefties who are up in arms (oops, bad metaphor) about this are just afraid of the lameness competition?
I think that Ant is upset because he thinks of himself as being the model spokesman for anything related to zero (with respect to #5).
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 01 11 at 11:59 AM • permalinkI want war-mongering, human rights-abusing government leaders to face trial and life imprisonment.
Well, some of them anyway.
Posted by Mystery Meat on 2006 01 11 at 12:10 PM • permalinkOkay, so if Bush has cut mine safety inspectors… yet statistically mine safety has continued to improve during his time in office… then we should be happy that for once a government agency is working more efficiently and effectively, no?
But if you look at that and you still conclude that cutting mine inspectors was a crime, then you’re obviously not actually concerned about mine safety, but ONLY about protecting all government jobs permanently, regardless of need or effectiveness.
Glad we straightened that out.
I want war-mongering, human rights-abusing government leaders to face trial and life imprisonment.
Despite this statement, there seemed to be quite a lack of enthusiasm among a certain large section of public opinion at seeing Saddam Hussein facing trial and imprisonment. Was Mr. L one of these?
But maybe Saddam didn’t qualify. Let’s see:
War-mongering - Well, he did invade Iran in order to grab Iranian territory. Check. Then later he invaded Kuwait to grab Kuwaiti territory (and the millions of barrels of oil that go with it). Check. I think that’s pretty much the definition of war mongering.
Human rights-abusing - One look at the record puts this one away in a moment. Genocidal poison gas attacks, ecological destruction to control certain populations, mass graves, acid baths, wood chippers, body parts delivered to doorsteps, etc. etc. not to mention the lack of the basics, like free speech, freedom of religious worship, freedom of assocation, etc. I’m no expert but I would call those human rights abuses.
Government leader - I guess maybe if Saddam wasn’t a government leader he wouldn’t fall within the criteria. But, seeing how everything in Iraq was named after Saddam (Saddam City, Saddam Airport, Saddam this, Saddam that), seeing how his face was on all the money, seeing how his portrait was literally everywhere, and seeing how he was head of the Revolutionary Command Council it’s pretty hard to make the case that he wasn’t the leader of Iraq and didn’t have responsibility for what went on there.
So in my book he qualifies. And yet, so many people wanted to leave him alone because he was “contained”, because he was the leader of a “sovereign” country, because…, because…, well because their principles shift on a dime when it’s politically expedient and they really don’t give a s*** about human rights-abusing world leaders. Or more properly, the don’t give a s*** about the people being abused unless they are useful as a pawn in some political war.
I’m also struck by this distinction -
Bush and Blair (and many others) waged a war to depose a tyrant, end a genocial regime, and give people a chance to form their own government. The elections in Iraq didn’t happen in spite of us, they happened because of us.
Saddam Hussein waged two wars to grab territory and didn’t bring a free vote to anyone. In fact, he tried to wipe Kuwait off the map and deny them any say in their affairs whatsoever.
Which situation do you think is a better examplar of “war-mongering”?
Dammit, I knew I should have emailed “ethnically suspect” around as soon as I found it on the idiot’s blog. Instead I just left a smart-arsed comment.
Posted by HisHineness on 2006 01 11 at 06:27 PM • permalinkThe Coke Zero ad campaign twists lefty nipples in knots because they still generally believe that ‘the masses’ are as easily manipulated by propaganda as they are.
Yes, but the good news is that the lefties are always generous enough to make themselves available to tell all those masses what’s good for them. Sure, it’s a sacrifice, but somebody has to do it.
Kcom 28
Yes, but the good news is that the lefties are always generous enough to make themselves available to tell all those masses what’s good for them.
Funny thing that.
The trick is to make sure that all they can manage to do is “make themselves available to tell” rather than allow them to disarm us so they can plain old tell us what to do.
Fortunately most of the ‘bats in the west are pretty damn lazy and rarely work up the gumption for anything beyond hot air production. They have to rely on products like the Kyoto protocol in hopes of creating the conditions for their revolution.
Loewenstein’s blunderful ways are catching. The Australian blog awards list Loewenstein as ‘Anthony Looowenstein’.
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“ethnically suspect”
Well, it IS brown…